1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle safety apparatus for ensuring the safety of a vehicle, and, more particularly, to a vehicle safety apparatus for preventing a vehicle from theft or the like.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, there is a trend toward vehicle safety apparatus for ensuring the safety of a vehicle in vehicles, such as a prevention of a theft of a vehicle. Such a conventional vehicle safety apparatus (for example, a vehicle antitheft device) is so constructed as to issue a warning or the like when certain damage is inflicted on a vehicle or vehicle-mounted equipment or an accident occurs in the vehicle.
As a vehicle antitheft device, there has been proposed a device for turning on a display for use in electronic equipment mounted in a vehicle when detecting an occurrence of an accident in the vehicle (refer to Japanese patent application publication (TOKKAIHEI) No. 10-154279 (paragraphs (0009) to (0015) and FIGS. 1 and 2), for example). Concretely, when detecting an occurrence of an accident in the vehicle, the vehicle antitheft device disclosed in Japanese patent application publication No. 10-154279 switches the display of the vehicle-mounted equipment into on state, maximizes the brightness of the display, and then displays a white image on the display. Furthermore, when the abnormal state lasts for a predetermined time period, the vehicle antitheft device displays a word of warning on the display while blinking the display.
When the abnormal state further continues, the vehicle antitheft device causes all circuits to fully operate while driving all motors mounted in the vehicle-mounted equipment. The vehicle antitheft device them picks up an image of the inside of the vehicle by using a camera, stores the image in a memory, displays the image on the display.
Thus, when detecting an occurrence of an accident in the vehicle, the vehicle antitheft device disclosed in Japanese patent application publication No. 10-154279 issues an alarm that gradually increases in the degree of warning so as to prevent a theft of the vehicle or the vehicle-mounted device as long as the abnormal state continues.
Since the vehicle antitheft device, which has been provided as a conventional vehicle safety apparatus, is constructed as mentioned above, when the driver turns off an ignition switch, gets off the vehicle and locks the doors of the vehicle, the vehicle antitheft device starts operating and then determines whether an accident occurs by detecting whether or not a door is opened without any door key being used, or detecting a glass crack by using a shock sensor.
For this reason, the conventional vehicle safety apparatus operates after a thief has inflicted certain damage on the vehicle. In other words, a problem with the conventional vehicle safety apparatus is that while it can issue a warning or the like when a thief enters the vehicle, thereby producing an effect of preventing theft to a certain degree, it is difficult to effectively prevent a theft of the vehicle because a thief can start the engine of the vehicle and steal the vehicle in a short time.
Another problem with the conventional vehicle safety apparatus is that because it operates after an accident (or damage) has been inflicted on the vehicle (concretely, after a door or pane has been broken), while it can prevent the vehicle from theft, damage is inflicted on the vehicle itself.
A further problem with the conventional vehicle safety apparatus is that it only takes a theft-prevention measure, and cannot notify a positional relationship between the vehicle and an object (for example, another vehicle) to the driver in advance and therefore cannot ensure the safety of the vehicle.